During the interview I noticed that Jessica showed signs of struggle with Semantic and syntactic features of the English language. I asked Jessica what languages were spoken in her home She replied, both Spanish and English. Then later she informed me that they only speak Spanish in the home. I realized she had some confusion with my question. When I asked Jessica what was the primary language spoken in her home? She replied, "Umm, primary, umm", so I rephrased the question. Me: Like what language do your parents speak more? Jessica: Oh Si, Spanish. We speak Spanish always. My mother speak no English but my father. Me: Your father speaks English. Here I believe Jessica is struggling with some semantic issues. She is apparently misunderstanding
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Use simple words and speak directly. Try to keep is short and sweet. Using pictures, hand gestures and any other kind of visuals would be a great benefit for her. Jessica may also benefit from having some simple activities connecting words with the multiple meanings they possess.
Some syntactic struggles I noticed were when I asked Jessica about her education system in Puerto Rico. Me: Is there a large difference in the Education system there than there is here? Jessica: Ummm, Si in Spanish. We kinda like have ummm ah system like Middle school and High school but, all in Spanish speaking. Jessica caught herself responding in Spanish. She uses Spanish words when she replies quickly. The second part of her replied showed evidence of syntactic struggles. Let 's remove the "umm" to make her reply say "We kinda like have ah system like Middle School and High School, but all in Spanish speaking. Even removing her "umm" she still has added words which are added to give her time to think such as "like, kinda and ah". These words keep her sentence from flowing properly. She is also skipped over some important words that make this sentence …show more content…
"But my father" should be followed by a verb phrase which is missing. I understood what she meant though. What she was trying to tell me is that her father DOES speak English but her mother does not. "My mother speak no English" is meant to be "My mother does not speak English" or "doesn 't speak any English" would also be correct. As I came to the end of the interview I asked Jessica if there was anything else about her culture and transition that she would like to share? Jessica replied, "It 's hard. It 's very hard. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of practice. I 'm still struggling sometimes. I feel like I can not get rid of my accent and I will never get rid of my accent." What stands out here is when Jessica tells me she is still struggling sometimes. We would not say "still struggling sometimes". What we would say is "sometimes I still struggle". This is a word order grammatical
Use simple words and speak directly. Try to keep is short and sweet. Using pictures, hand gestures and any other kind of visuals would be a great benefit for her. Jessica may also benefit from having some simple activities connecting words with the multiple meanings they possess.
Some syntactic struggles I noticed were when I asked Jessica about her education system in Puerto Rico. Me: Is there a large difference in the Education system there than there is here? Jessica: Ummm, Si in Spanish. We kinda like have ummm ah system like Middle school and High school but, all in Spanish speaking. Jessica caught herself responding in Spanish. She uses Spanish words when she replies quickly. The second part of her replied showed evidence of syntactic struggles. Let 's remove the "umm" to make her reply say "We kinda like have ah system like Middle School and High School, but all in Spanish speaking. Even removing her "umm" she still has added words which are added to give her time to think such as "like, kinda and ah". These words keep her sentence from flowing properly. She is also skipped over some important words that make this sentence …show more content…
"But my father" should be followed by a verb phrase which is missing. I understood what she meant though. What she was trying to tell me is that her father DOES speak English but her mother does not. "My mother speak no English" is meant to be "My mother does not speak English" or "doesn 't speak any English" would also be correct. As I came to the end of the interview I asked Jessica if there was anything else about her culture and transition that she would like to share? Jessica replied, "It 's hard. It 's very hard. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of practice. I 'm still struggling sometimes. I feel like I can not get rid of my accent and I will never get rid of my accent." What stands out here is when Jessica tells me she is still struggling sometimes. We would not say "still struggling sometimes". What we would say is "sometimes I still struggle". This is a word order grammatical